[strulovich]

Barring all the issues, if you did build a huge fleet of autonomous taxis - smaller, lighter cars with less moving pieces would save you a lot of money.

2 seater - smaller car

No wheels or stuff - saves money on the build and parts.

[dmix]

They are probably planning to reuse lots of parts from model 3 to save money

And people are creatures of habit and highly social so version 1 of robotaxis will 100% look like normal cars. Regardless of whatever benefits you can come up with on paper. Once it's normalized then you experiment.

[saturn8601]

This is the company that released the CyberTruck. V1 will probably look mostly like what was presented. Every single prototype they have ever unveiled eventually ended up looking very similar to the production model.

[rob74]

Mark my words: the "final form" of robotaxis will seat 4 (up to 6 in a pinch) people on facing seats, will be able to drive in both directions and have all 4 wheels fully steerable for more flexibility.

[Iulioh]

The 4 fully steerable wheels on robottaxis is an interesting ones.

For human drivers were a little overkill with no real advange besides parking in small spaces) but they would be probably more usefull.

But the fact that they are a little too complex remains, maybe making them semi standardized and modular would help

[ulfw]

Or god forbid you'd build a proper electric public transport network that can transport dozens, sometimes hundreds of people way more efficiently.

[rob74]

You can see Musk's vision of that in Las Vegas: in tunnels (so it doesn't disturb "regular" motorists), but still using cars (what else?).